


scorched

by lorilanda



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, F/M, Gen, Immortality, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Scheming, Urban Fantasy, a plot twist or two or five, roadtrip (i mean... technically), very fancy dinner parties
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,251
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27581042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lorilanda/pseuds/lorilanda
Summary: "Exactly." She holds out her hand. "Edward Elric, let's make a deal. I'll help you get back your brother if, in exchange, you help me find the Flame."He doesn't hesitate before taking her hand.The Elric Brothers try to fulfill their teacher's final assignment. Hawkeye is looking for the man she once loved. And somewhere, a homunculus starts to laugh.
Relationships: Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric, Edward Elric & Riza Hawkeye, Riza Hawkeye/Roy Mustang
Comments: 8
Kudos: 20





	1. prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * For [silverinerivers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverinerivers/gifts).



> first of all - lulu, i'm sorry for this monster /sobs  
> second - i haven't written fma in a reeeeeally long time... it's good to be back!

It's not late yet - midnight, maybe, but time means little to them. The woman in a black business suit stands across the bureau from the man in front of her, sitting in his chair like a throne - dressed for a courtroom rather than a meeting like this, black hair pulled into a sharp ponytail. Eyes narrowed like he's about to smile any second now.

"You know why I'm here, don't you?" she asks. "I don't have to tell you about all of this now."

He leans his head to one side. "Oh but darling, it won't hurt if you tell me again."

Cocky as always. It's been decades, centuries, millennia, and his pitch-black throne room has been long since swapped for the glassy office of a CEO, but that doesn't stop him from still acting like a monarch.

She narrows her eyes. Lips in a thin line. "Don't act like that. You know I hate it."

"Like what?"

"You know exactly what I mean."

A fast reach into her purse and the next second, the barrel of a gun is pointed at him. A slow smile spreads on his face. "You haven't gotten slow at all, Hawkeye."

She doesn't lower her guard, but there's the hint of a smile on her face as well. "You're not bad yourself either. Shadow Monarch."

The shadows behind her, sharpened to a blade that's just moments away from piercing the thin skin on her neck, crumble and vanish into thin air. The tension in her shoulders loosens and she lowers her gun.

"The Ice Queen told me about what you're looking for," he says, eyes still half-closed. "It's about the Most Ancient Flame, isn't it? He's still missing."

"Call her by her name," the woman demands. "We all have one, remember? It doesn't always have to be nothing but titles and meaningless rules we made up for ourselves." She doesn't say anything about the Flame. Anyone knows better than to call the Flame by his real name.

He sighs. "Fine, fine," with playful annoyance layered somewhere in his voice. "Olivier told me. I don't hear you deny the part about the Flame, though."

She shrugs. "What's there to deny? He's gone missing without saying anything. I want to go find him, and I need your help for it."

"Honey, we're not humans. Some of us go missing from time to time, for centuries, even. They always return eventually. It happens."

"Not him." Her eyes are determined. "Not him. He wouldn't do that."

"I know you two had a... thing, a while ago." He crosses his legs on his chair, and for a moment she remembers twenty, sixty, two hundred years ago where he still commanded the world from the throne instead of from the shadows. Pun not intended. "And I get your worry, darling-"

"Don't call me that."

"-I get why you're worried, but what's in this for me? Even if something really happened to him, you don't know what you're getting yourself involved with. What if it's something beyond your abilities?" He mock-gasps. "Or, dare I say it - beyond your pay grade?"

"Kimblee." She give him a dark look. "It's been two millennia, and you're still not funny."

"I'm wounded, my darling." He sighs. "Or should I call you Riza instead?” The ground beneath their feet shudders. “You do seem to prefer that name these days. A shame, with a beautiful sobriquet like Hawkeye."

"I don't care what the likes of you call me," she says shortly. "And for records, I do have an idea of what I'm dealing with."

"Oh?"

"There have been Homunculi sightings all over Europe in the last few months. One of them might be behind the Flame's disappearance."

"Is that so." He lowers his head and finally lowers his head - the time to pretend that he's smiling is over. "In that case, dear Riza, I can't help you. My apologies, but I'd like to keep my head for the time being. Being a CEO is nice, you know, and I'm not willing to give that up quite yet."

"You're a coward," she hisses. Her sense of justice has always been too great, that poor thing. Makes one wonder how she survived for that long, with the world's history being the way it is. "If a Homunculus is running amok for too long, nobody knows what the consequences will be. Especially if they've managed to capture the Flame."

"So what?" He raises his hands. The tattoos that go all the way from his palms to his shoulders, hidden underneath his expensive white suit, start crawling on his skin. "We'll survive. You know the Flame - he'll get himself out of that situation eventually. He always does, doesn't he?"

The thing is: While the Flame might be one of the most powerful ones of them to have ever existed, he does get himself into trouble on a regular base. He also gets himself out of trouble just as easily - but this time, he doesn't have Hawkeye to cover his back for him. This time, he's all alone.

"I don't know," she says. "I don't know."

"Well, my dearest, in any case, I won't be able to help you with this. Ask the Ice Queen or the Eastern King. I doubt it, but they might be willing to help you. The Wanderer too, maybe - her heart was always too soft for her kind of job."

"So you won't help me."

"I don't think you expected me to in the first place."

She turns around wordlessly and walks over to the exit. He suppresses the urge to giggle hysterically: This is what attachments do to you. They make you walk into your certain death, just like that.

Instead, he clears his throat when she's already half out the door. She stops without turning around.

"Whatever you do, I hope you find him."

"Thank you." She closes the door behind her without looking back.


	2. a knife and a deal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which deals are made.

"This wasn't what I thought we would do when you said that we would visit Vienna," Edward complains about twenty minutes in. "Can't we at least go sightseeing afterwards?"

"Oh come on, stop complaining," Alphonse scolds him without looking up from the modified maps app. "You knew exactly what would happen when Master told us that she'd send us here."

"How are we even gonna _do_ it?" Edward complains and ignores Alphonse completely. "Catch a Homunculus, she said. It's going to be fun, she said. Never a single word on how we're supposed to find it, much less catch or kill it."

"I'm pretty sure the problem is rather that it will try to kill us first," Alphonse said and points into some vacant side street. "Come on, this way." The map sports a bright red dot in its center now - the Homunculus can't be that far away. Once again, Edward is weirdly glad for modern technology.

"Yeah, yeah, sure. As if something like that would be enough to even put a scratch on me."

"Sure it would." Their way leads them into Vienna's inner city. It's almost Christmas and the beautiful, wide streets are filled to the brim with more people than they could possibly count, shoving, pushing, trying to get to various stores in order to buy a souvenir or a gift. They look more like a single, moving mass than separate beings - if a homunculus was hiding somewhere, they'd have a hard time finding it.

Or at least that's what they thought. Five minutes in, Edward has been elbowed by random people walking by at least five times and Alphonse almost had his phone stolen, when the map on the display begins blinking rapidly.

They know what that means. A being with an extraordinarily powerful aura must be close by - and there's only one of those beings in this place that they know of. They look at each other.

Homunculus.

Someone tries to push their way through the crowd and accidentally pushes Edward so hard that he briefly loses his balance. Before he can yell at them to be more careful, he stumbles into somebody.

He looks up. The woman he ran into is more beautiful than anyone or anything he has ever seen - black hair, curled, that reaches to her hips, dark red lips that are curled into the hint of a smile, pale skin, taller than either of them. She's wearing a fur coat and a black dress underneath that exposes her cleavage, but she doesn't seem to be cold in the slightest. Her gloves reach up all the way to her elbows and despite the sky being grey and dark, she wears sunglasses like a diva.

"Oh, I'm sorry," Edward hastily apologizes. "I didn't mean to-"

He stands up, and accidentally knocks off her sunglasses. Before he can jump back in horror, he sees her red eyes underneath them - and his blood freezes for a completely different reason.

One of her eyes, dark red as it is, is circled by a black symbol Edward knows all too well. Their teacher mentioned it often enough for it to be burned into their memories forever - a winged snake, biting its own tail.

An Ouroboros.

Before Edward can stop himself, he stumbles backwards. "Homunculus," he hisses and Alphonse takes a sharp breath. Her eyes widen in surprise for a moment - then she moves so fast that she dissolves into a blur. The next thing that Edward knows is that she's standing next to him, arm wrapped around his shoulders like they're old friends. A knife is pressed into his throat.

"Now, let's be all friends here," the woman says with a sweet smile. "You guys are big on not hurting any civilians, right? It would be a shame if I started to fight here and suddenly, dozens were dead. An unexplainable, gory death, and nobody would ever find out what happened.” A giggle. “Let's go somewhere more... quiet."

She hushes Edward across the street. He wants to protest, wants to struggle free from her grasp and fight back - he probably could, given his and her physical abilities - but she's so, so beautiful, and Edward finds that actually, he doesn't want her to be sad. Better to do everything she says. Someone this pretty can't possibly be wrong.

The back alley they end up in is vacant, with no people far and wide. "There, that's better. Nobody will hear you now, even if you scream."

Alphonse grits his teeth. "You're a Homunculus," he says. "So beautiful that one can't help but follow your every wish from the moment they lay eyes on you. You're Lust, aren't you?"

She grins and shows perfect white teeth. Her canines are longer than those of any human should be. "Oh, people are talking about me? I'm flattered."

"Now let Ed go."

"Oh?" She raises her eyebrows. "You start getting on my nerves, kid." She disappears, moving faster than should be possible for a human being - but she isn't human, is she? - and, with a perfectly placed strike to Alphonse's neck, she knocks him out. His lifeless body crumbles to the floor. Edward wants to yell, but all air leaves his lungs. He can't move, not as long as he's looking at her.

Then she catches Edward in a deadly embrace.

She's leaning above him, holding him in place with one hand in his hair like a twisted version of a kiss. Her knife is aimed at his chest, and the blade presses through the layers of clothing right into his chest. A few more seconds, Edward thinks, and it will draw blood. A few more and it will hit his ribcage and pierce his heart. Bye-bye life. Maybe overstepping his boundaries wasn't such a good idea after all.

Sorry, Al.

Then a mechanic click sounds through the winter air. Lust stops.

"Get away from him immediately," a new voice says. It belongs to a woman, and it's ice cold. "Or I'll shoot."

Lust's lips curl into a smile. "Hawkeye. Who would have thought that I'd run into you here?"

"I won't repeat myself. I'll shoot you if you don't let go immediately."

Lust sighs. "Fine, fine." A shove, and then Edward stumbles away from the curve of her body and onto the cold pavement. He can finally see their savior: a woman in a black business suit, blonde hair neatly tied back into a bun. There's a gun in her hand, barrel aimed right at Lust's head.

Her eyes are closed.

"Who are-" Edward manages before Lust moves lighting fast behind Alphonse and uses his lifeless body as a shield. 

"Al!" Edward yells in horror. Lust wraps her gloved arms around Al's chest like she's hugging him.

"Whoa, stop right there. One wrong movement, and I'll kill the boy."

"Let go of Al immediately!"

She licks her lips and smiles at him. "Oh, but what guarantees me that this woman won't kill me, then? She's sick like that, shooting a helpless young lady."

The woman's - Hawkeye's - grip on the pistol tightens. "Let go of him right now. I'll shoot right through him to get to you if I have to."

The blood in Edward's veins freezes to ice.

"We both know you wouldn't do that," Lust coos. "You're too soft for that. Aren’t you, Hawkeye?"

Hawkeye wordlessly corrects her aim and Lust grins.

"I'm afraid you can't have the boy just yet, so I'll take him with me. Don't worry, you'll get him back in a bit." She takes a few steps backwards and smiles sweetly. "Maybe."

Before either of them can do anything, she flickers twice and disappears along with a still unconscious Alphonse in her arms. Edward’s hoarse screams of his brother's name get drowned out in the shots Hawkeye fires immediately, one after another. But they only hit empty space.

She lowers her weapon and curses. "She got away," she says. When she sees the terror in Edward's eyes, she adds, "Don't worry, she won't hurt your brother. She used him as a means to get away, but he doesn't mean anything to her aside from that, and despite her looks, she doesn't kill unprovoked. There's a good chance she'll just drop him after a while."

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" Edward hisses through gritted teeth. "My brother's gone, taken away by a monster, and I don't know if I'll ever see him again."

She sighs and squats before him, so that they're on eye level. "Boy. What's your name?"

"Edward Elric."

"Edward Elric. Do you want me to help you find your brother?"

He hesitates. "Why would you possibly want to help me?"

"Come with me and I'll tell you."

Finally, he sighs. "Fine. Okay. Alright. Not like I have any other choice, do I?" He can't just go and face his master like this. Not while Al is in the hands of the enemy.

She gives him a small smile and stands up to offer him her hand. "That's good. I promise that I'll do everything I can to get him back."

He grips her hand and lets himself get pulled up by her. "My name is Riza," she says. Maybe he's just imagining it, but the ground seems to tremor at her words. "Come with me and I'll tell you everything I know."

Edward shouldn't be doing this - he shouldn't be going with a stranger he only met a few minutes ago, who is a deadly sharpshooter and was directly involved in Al's kidnapping. But he doesn't exactly have any other option right now, so he swallows and nods. "Okay. Let's go."

.

Twenty minutes later, he sits in the living room of a small apartment somewhere close by. Riza was very vague about whether or not it actually belonged to her, but she seems to find her way around the kitchen cupboards well enough and a few minutes later, she pours them some steaming tea and sits down across from him on one of the couches.

"So," Edward begins. "You promised me answers."

Riza sighs. "That woman you met - her name is Lust. She is a homunculus, an artificial-"

"I know." It might not be a good idea to upset the deadly sharpshooter who rescued him from certain death, but Edward doesn't have time to play games now. He needs to get Alphonse back as fast as possible.

She stops, surprised. "You know that she's a homunculus, and yet you still approached her?"

"We had an assignment from our teacher," Edward says. He's too stubborn to back down here. "To capture or kill a homunculus." He stays silent about the fact that it was their final exam and that they failed. That he lost Al, even. He doesn't want to imagine their teacher's wrath when he comes back and will be confronted with his own mistakes.

"Your teacher?"

"She calls herself Izumi," Edwards says. "She took us in when our mother died and taught us to use our magic powers. She trained us ever since we were little."

Riza's eyes widen at that and she sets down her cup of tea with a clink. "Izumi, you say?"

"Yeah." Edward frowns. "Why, do you know her?"

"Edward." She looks at him with serious eyes. "How much do you know about the Old Ones?"

"The-" he stops. "A few things. Whatever our teacher has told us over the years, I suppose. There are only a few of them, and all of them are insanely powerful human beings who can't die, right? There's the Forgotten Monarch and the Ice Queen and a few others. Around fifty? Sixty?"

Then he abruptly stops. "Wait. You can't possibly be-"

"I'm one of them." Riza lowers her head in a nod. "Most people don't remember me as well as the Monarch or the King of the East, but I'm the one known as Hawkeye. Your teacher as well." She picks up her cup again and takes a sip. "She's one of the oldest of us - not that age means a lot when you're as old as we are - and she's known by the name the Wanderer. I've never heard of her taking a student, though."

Edward gapes at her. "That's-"

"It's a lot to take in, I know."

"The entire time?"

"Yes."

"That..." Edward hesitates. "That actually makes a lot of sense. And you're one of them as well."

"I am."

"So why did you rescue me and Al?" he asks. "Are you after the homunculi as well?"

She sighs. "I think to explain that, I need to start a bit earlier. Have you ever heard about the First Flame?"

Edward frowns. "Only fragments. He can use fire with the power to burn down entire continents. And he is one of the oldest of you, right?"

Riza nods. "The Flame is one of my oldest... acquaintances. A while ago, he went missing without telling anyone. And while that's not exactly an unusual thing for one of us to do, he would never disappear without telling anyone first. That was also around the time that the first homunculi started appearing again."

With narrowed eyes, Edward says, "So the reason you want to help me get Al back and capture a Homunculus is..."

"Exactly." She doesn't look harsh, exactly, but there's a hint of steel in her voice as she holds her hand out. "Edward Elric, let's make a deal. I'll help you get back your brother if, in exchange, you help me find the Flame."

He doesn't hesitate before taking her hand.

**Author's Note:**

> say hi on [twitter](https://twitter.com/neonlightism)!


End file.
